Tim HorvathLiterary Darwinism and Literary Darwinisms: Let the Games Begin…
1 January 2005

In Evolution and Literary Theory (1995), a work boasting the
heft of a local telephone directory, Joseph Carroll essentially called
for a new era in literary studies; the transition he delineated would
require two phases. First would have to come a veritable razing of the
existing structure, the Derridean and Foucauldian-dominated
poststructuralist paradigm which was, he argued, hopelessly flawed, and
ultimately constructed on egregiously shoddy foundations. Indeed,
Carroll's own book served as a formidable wrecking ball, devoting a
considerable proportion of its 515 pages to such polemical labor. The
second phase was and remains, of course, the reconstruction of literary
studies on sounder cornerstones, namely Darwinian ones, and in
particular those of evolutionary psychology. Now, at last, Literary Darwinism
reaches us, a slenderer book which takes as optimistic an attitude as
one could imagine for its far-reaching agenda, and offers up some
sample blueprints for what the reconstruction will entail.

Carroll’s unswerving optimism is refreshing and lends a sense of
inclusiveness and shared purpose to his work, all too rare in academic
criticism. His liberal use of “we” is no accident; it feels as though
“we” might be collectively striving for a tangible feat, such as a
manned Mars mission, except of course that in this case, the venture
will carry us into exclusively intellectual frontiers. Along the way,
the arguments are delivered so straightforwardly and unpretentiously
that at times it feels as if he is understating the magnitude and
potential ramifications of the endeavor. To cite a few noteworthy
instances:

Neither statement alone provides adequate structure,
but if we combine them and mediate between them, we shall find that we
now have the means for analyzing literary representations and for
understanding the psychological foundations of literature.[on
synthesizing Mithen and Gazzaniga] (103)

The failure of cognitive rhetoric is one of the most encouraging
developments in the literary theory of the past decade. It is
encouraging because the cause of failure is easy to diagnose, and the
diagnosis points us very clearly in the direction we need to take. (105)

The effort to construct a paradigm for Darwinian literary
criticism and the effort to construct a paradigm for the broader field
of Darwinian psychology...need each other. Fortunately, they are both
within reach, and by reaching the one, we can reach the other. (189)

One is tempted to say, “Two paradigms in an afternoon of reading...is that
all?” For, as illustrated above, Carroll’s quarry is nothing less than
the consilience that he praises in the work of E.O. Wilson. Throughout
the book, Carroll reiterates and reassures the reader that such a goal
is not only achievable, not only laudable, not only inevitable, but
that it really oughtn't to be all that difficult, if one — or
we -- can only navigate our way through the Scyllas and Charybdises of
muddled thinking, obscurantism, false analogy, and self-aggrandizement.
In this sense, the book is suffused with a humility which places it
firmly in the company of esteemed forerunners such as Wilson and even
Darwin himself. Carroll has great respect for "the common reader”
(145), in terms of both taste and sensibility, although he draws the
line at certain species of pop prehistoric fiction, no matter how many
copies flew off the shelf.
In large part, the volume unites between two covers an assortment of
essays previously published in forward-thinking literary journals that
have proved hospitable to Darwinian analyses, along with journals
focused primarily on evolutionary theory, such as Evolution and Human Behavior and Human Nature,
which have themselves opened up lanes for traffic creeping in the
opposite direction toward literature and the arts. Occasionally, the
“previously-published” nature of these pieces is made evident by the
way in which ideas repeat in multiple essays, but this is a small ante
for larger riches. The very act of arranging these essays into a single
work makes for an indispensable resource for anyone concerned with
ideas which, if we take Carroll's word for it, are themselves going to
be indispensable in future scholarship. Moreover, one of the three
brand-new essays in the book, "Human Nature and Literary Meaning," does
more than its share -- it is surely the most useful and groundbreaking
chapter in the entire book. In fact, this chapter could have, and
deserves to have, a significant impact on not only discussions in the
humanities, but in the social sciences themselves. In pushing for this
radical revamping of the field of literary studies, Carroll winds up
proposing a more subtle, but equally critical shift in evolutionary
psychology itself -- rather than merely applying a closed theoretical
system "to" literature, Carroll argues boldly that evolutionary
psychology needs to challenge some of its own assumptions and
prematurely-ossified doctrines, and that the study of literature
provides precisely the occasion for such a healthy shake-up. After all,
one of the more delicious consequences of his theory is that literary
writers are conceived of as intuitive psychologists, who provided
humanity with the most astute and searching “data” and “commentary”
available until psychologists came along to hang up shingles and
formalize a field; we can envision the cultural icon of Shakespeare,
unschooled formally but somehow peering and tapping into humanity’s
deepest character, as representative of all writers in this regard.

Literary Darwinism is divided into three sections. The
first, "Mapping the Disciplinary Landscape," features Carroll engaging
directly and explicitly with other thinkers and writers. This section
in part reiterates, synoptically and in specific review contexts, the
more polemical aspects of Evolution and Literary Theory, but
also performs critical work of its own. The chapter on Pinker, for
instance, establishes that literature itself cannot be written off
merely as “mental cheesecake" (68), a byproduct of other
cognitive and behavioral adaptations, but instead demands its own day
in the analytical spotlight. The chapter on E.O. Wilson
celebrates Wilson's accomplishments across the disciplines, and
perceptively aims to rescue from Wilson's work a more nuanced
perspective on literature than Wilson himself gives. To do so, Carroll
extracts Wilson's own notion of "scenarios" from one part of Consilience
and reapplies it to literature; this notion of scenarios later turns
out to be the closest existing prototype for Carroll's own theory of
the “total meaning structure” and “total meaning situation” (150),
though the latter terms are original, and Carroll establishes them as
his own.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly in this first section, Carroll
painstakingly distinguishes the adaptationist program from what he
believes to be well-intentioned but misguided attempts at integrating
evolutionary theory with literature, such as the projects of cognitive
rhetoricians like Turner and Lakoff, who implicitly cite evolution but
neglect to explicitly ground their theories in it. Even less
salvageable for Carroll is the work of those critics who adopt
evolution as a guiding metaphor or principle, but in doing so distort
natural selection as it applies specifically to products of the
imagination. As a mere metaphor, it seems, “evolution” can hinder as
much as help. The single theorist rightly credited with conducting
book-length adaptationist criticism is Robert Storey, whose Mimesis and the Human Animal
is a heavyweight contender in the field. Adaptationism, of course,
means the program laid out by sociobiology, and then refined by
evolution psychology, to study the mind and behavior as shaped by
natural selection, using the scientific evidence that has been culled
from numerous fields. Whatever one thinks of Carroll's hard-driving
critiques of much of this work, his taxonomy is accurate and useful,
and will help anyone attempting to survey the available options.

It’s really Part Two, though, where things start to gel, surge forward,
and deliver on the promises of the title. In its six essays, readers
will find the most constructive arguments, examples, and at last get to
observe adaptationist criticism put to the test. (Although the third
section, which incorporates two essays on Darwin and Darwinism, is
intriguing, it seems peripheral to Carroll’s larger undertaking, and
thus has the distinct feeling of afterthought). The first two chapters
deal with universals, and introduce some of the key ideas which
comprise Carroll’s synthesis. By crossing the cognitive archaeologist
Steven Mithen’s notion of cognitive fluidity with the
domain-specificity and modularity-centered model offered by Tooby and
Cosmides, Carroll argues, we can begin to understand how literature
operates adaptively. Correlating cognitive fluidity with general
intelligence (g), Carroll draws our attention to the interplay of
individuality and universality that is, of course, part of our everyday
cognitive landscape, as well as the literary landscape.

It is here that Carroll speaks to the need for both the humanities and
the sciences, even the Darwinists themselves, to question their
assumptions. Carroll cites literary works as examples par excellence
of individuality and general intelligence, two traits that he believes
evolutionary psychologists too often lose sight of, in their zeal to
reverse-engineer painstakingly-circumscribed domains. As he argues, we
must afford as much attention to individuality as to the universals and
statistical tendencies of human nature that scientific inquiry teases
out. Even further, he breaks down this very dichotomy, reminding us
that according to adaptationist arguments, individuality itself takes
on certain universal forms that are predictable and somewhat regular.
Invoking a number of models, such as life-history analysis and
personality trait theory, Carroll is able to show how we can talk about
characters not only as universal types, driven by the sorts of motives
that “evolutionary psychology teaches us to expect,” but as
distinct individuals.
Moreover, authors can be analyzed in this way—one of his mantras in
this section is that author, reader, and characters form a tripartite
ensemble which any and every complete literary analysis will be
obligated to consider. Each of this ensemble’s participants has a point
of view, and thus Carroll calls upon this staple of traditional
literary analysis to take on a new centrality in his schema.
Underscoring the interplay of points of view that constitute literary
works, Carroll arrives at his key notions of the “total meaning
structure,” the author’s worldview as embodied dynamically through the
characters in the text, and “total meaning situation,” which invites
the reader’s point of view into this circuit. On the face of it, these
ideas might sound relatively innocuous and even anti-climactic,
vestiges of traditional criticism, except that they are integrated with
evolutionary ideas in a way that thoroughly reinvigorates them.

The real payoff only becomes evident once Carroll advances two
additional and related ideas which are, in my view, the most compelling
in the book: that of “the need to create cognitive order” as a
universal human motive, and the notion of the “cognitive behavioral
system,” which he lays alongside those systems which others have
posited and sketched out previously, which have developed to respond to
concerns of survival, technology, mating, parenting, kin, and social
existence. Literary works are created by, and about “people seeking to
perceive meaning in or impose meaning on the events of their own lives
and the lives of every person they know” (202). (One of the surprising
and somewhat refreshing benefits of buying into a Darwinian perspective
on literature is that anything that can be said about authors can by
definition also be related to characters in some way, and vice versa;
how strange that it should often appear strange that one is reflecting
on people and not only textual and cultural constructs.) The systems of
meaning that authors manifest through their writings, for Carroll, are
close kin to philosophical systems and religious ones, and even serve
similar purposes—not necessarily to reveal truth, but to establish
“cognitive order.” His argument culminates in the point that the
“mental maps” or “models” that literary works constitute have an actual
“regulati[ve]” function. Carroll phrases it in succint and memorable
fashion:

The arts make sense of human needs and motives. They
simulate subjective experience, map out social relations, evoke sexual
and social interactions, depict the intimate relations of kin, and
locate the whole complex and interactive array of behavioral systems
within models of the total world order. Humans have a universal and
irrepressible need to fabricate this sort of order, and satisfying that
need provides a distinct form of pleasure and fulfillment. (198)

While simple on the surface, this valorizing of cognitive order has
profound implications for reading, some fortunate and some not.
Carroll’s actual readings of novels, the “pragmatic” side of this
chapter, are convincing only to a point. For instance, he is positively
delightful in showing us how Jane Austen manifests her own authorial
perspective in her characters as well as the tone of Pride and Prejudice,
which in turn is designed to harmonize with the readership she seeks to
entertain and engage. Ironically, in fact, the dullards in the story
who Austen dismisses, as she exposes cognitive styles ranging from the
witty to the obtuse, are dullards precisely because they only see in
terms of universals; there is a mobeius-strip like quality to Carroll’s
synthesis of literature and psychology, as he revels in the charming
irony that Mrs. Bennett might be the spitting proto-image of social
scientist who simply can’t bear to allow the results to interfere with
his/her hypothesis.

However, the method threatens to demote books, sometimes
unfairly, which exhibit those traits of cognitive order and coherence
less readily. Thus Bronte’s Vilette, Willa Cather’s O Pioneers!, and Bennett’s Anna of the Five Towns
are treated largely as aesthetic scrambles to compensate for the sexual
frustrations and societal discrimination that their authors presumably
confronted, and in the latter case, as a contrived effort ensuing from
a confused dichotomy held by the author. The danger here is analogous
to the danger that Carroll himself warned us about earlier in
naïve adaptationist criticism, where the behavior of the
characters is seen as merely reflecting a template handed off by the
sciences. Although Carroll is operating at a much more sophisticated
level of analysis than those who do “evolved-trait pattern-matching,”
he is nevertheless, in my view, decidedly less generous toward those
authors who are struggling with and perhaps against the normative. What
this in part boils down to is a debate about what will serve as
“cognitive order”; I personally find the psychological interpretation
of Anna which Carroll concocts to serve as a ludicrous counterexample
to be actually somewhat convincing, while he, evidently, finds this
interpretive “scenario” of his to be “forced and labored” (140).

In other words, the most stringently adaptationist Darwinism is not
going to get us into instant agreement about some fundamental matters,
such as what constitutes a great piece of writing, or even why a
character is made to act in such-and-such a way. And this is a
resoundingly wonderful outcome—with Darwin at last in and on
the field (and not just some ringer wearing Darwin’s uniform and
copping some of his moves), the games have just begun. Therefore, this
is precisely what I would like to propose, for the moment, in replacing
the teetering poststructuralist property—rather than doing too much
building just yet, perhaps now is the time to install a playing field
upon which many activities can take place, all of them grounded in the terra firma
of adaptationism. In fact, I would like to call for a Darwin on every
team, which makes for many Darwins, a literary Darwinist pluralism, in
which we maintain the strict adherence to adaptationism, but remain
reasonably flexible in terms of the manner in which we apply such
thinking to literature, and how we use literature to, as Carroll urges,
rethink the social sciences.

The word "pluralism" is loaded, because Carroll convincingly asserts
that Stephen Jay Gould appropriated the term in rhetorical efforts at
self-aggrandizement (230). The feud between Gould and mainstream
evolutionary psychologists has seen much spilled ink, and does not need
to be rehashed here. “Pluralism” is a vague term, and perhaps too
easy—who would object to pluralism, after all, in our age of the
triumph of liberal democracies? But nothing requires that we invoke
pluralism as a term which denotes revolutionary alternatives or checks
and balances to the force of natural selection; in fact, its practical
and methodological value lies in characterizing the adaptationist
program itself at its best. Carroll's arguments about the
cognitive-behavioral system and the evolved "need for conceptual and
imaginative order" are bracing and well worth pursuing, but it is
important to note that there are alternative Darwinian applications
which might be equally compelling, which need not compromise the
integrity and assiduousness of the adaptationist directive.

I will propose several as thought-experiments, then; indeed, as Carroll
reminds us, empirical experiment is an essential next step in
confirming or disconfirming their ultimate validity. Although Carroll
favors the notion of “cognitive order,” it could be the case that certain types of cognitive disorder,
in small installments, are actually adaptive, exactly as Carroll
himself argues that evolutionary psychology needs to be wary of
becoming too set in its ways. Indeed, one might argue that the
challenges to societal and dyadic norms posed by certain books are
precisely what readers need, cognitively and otherwise, to enhance
their ability to negotiate an ever-shifting social landscape.

Or, we might heighten our attention to the notion of immersion, which
certainly seems to be a part of the experience of readers of
literature, presumably at the conscious behest of authors. Storey, in Mimesis,
brings up Csikszentmihalyi’s notion of “flow,” and flow states; is
there something adaptive about getting caught up in characters,
situations, settings, which narrative enables? As one hypothesis as to
why this might be the case, consider that great literature might be not
cheesecake, as Pinker had it, but a banquet for the mind, the only
entity other than “the real world” capable of enlisting and engaging
most or all of our evolutionary propensities, from theory of mind, to
visual perception, to pretense, to setting-assessment, to
scenario-spinning, to the calculus of mating strategies, and so on and
so forth. The comprehensiveness of literary works in terms of engaging
the full spectrum and hierarchy of our evolutionary systems might
provide an alternative means of thinking about aesthetic value and the
like, and the reader’s ability to become immersed in the text might be
the phenomenological yardstick of such value.

Or, consider literary works as reflections of competing energies and
concerns, not the outmoded Freudian ones, but Darwinian ones, as
exemplified by the work of such thinkers as Janet Mann and Sarah
Blaffer-Hrdy, as well as anyone applying game theory to behavior. In
fact, evolutionary psychology and its constituent fields are replete
with work on tradeoffs and cost-benefit effects, and so one might raise
the question in regard to literary works: for example, is there a
tradeoff effect between verbal lushness and character realism, or
between character development and plot? Might different writing
styles represent the outgrowths of certain strategic authorial
tradeoffs?

Note that it would all-too-easily be possible to fumble the above
hypotheses by treating them as mere metaphors, plucked from the pages
of Evolution and Human Behavior and the other source-texts at
the leading edge of evolutionary psychology and applied in slapdash
fashion. To do justice to them would mean careful attention to the
literal and empirical phenomena of cognitive disorder, immersion, and
cost-benefit analysis, not merely to the more readily-distorted
abstract notions. The same is the case for the countless alternative
hypotheses sure to emerge from the fertile relationship between
literature and evolution. Ultimately, the point is not that the above
or future hypotheses are more likely to be true than Carroll’s—I think
in at least some measure he may prove to be right -- but rather to
remind ourselves continually that as we hopefully usher in a new era,
we have an incredibly rich and diverse toolkit with which to approach
literary interpretation. Thus, along with methodological rigor, we
should uphold and indulge the cognitive flexibility that appears to
have brought us, with Carroll spearheading the effort, this far.